Saturday, April 14, 2012

Week 3: CEDO 565 Leadership & Planning

This week we looked at a video and slide show of  Who Moved My Cheese, which was an interesting perspective on the way different types of people view and deal with change. It's the story of two mice, Sniff and Scurry; and two men, Hem and Haw who all value cheese as a major part of their lives. As the cheese supply begins to dwindle, the four characters deal with the change in different ways that are very characteristic of how people in our society deal with change related to what they value. I have heard of this story before, but found the exercise to be quite valuable--both in reflecting on my company's ability to deal with change and whether or not we take a proactive approach to stay ahead of the curve; and my own ability to roll with changes and whether or not I prefer to stay with what I know or continue to seek improvement along the way.

We also viewed the video: Changes in Thinking--Systems Thinking. One big idea I took from this video is the fact that systems are defined by the interactions of parts, and not by focusing on parts alone. As a manager of a system, I can appreciate this approach because while the individual parts all need to be effective in their own areas, in order for the organization as a whole to be healthy and functioning properly all parts need to be working toward the same goal. In my company we have a set of guiding principles and one of them is "systemic reliability." Essentially, this means that all players need to do their part in order for our systems to run effectively. This could apply to things as straight forward as completing paperwork on time, all the way to being on board with company objectives and "walking the talk" when interacting with coworkers and clients.

This week also brought my attention to an article called  Tune in to what the new generation of teachers can do by Richardson, J. (2008), which for me was one of the most valuable articles of the week, along with the Beloit College Mindset list for the class of 2015. I say this because, as someone who joined my organization as one of the "young people" working among many veteran teachers, I was often told that miscommunications, conflicts, or hard feelings were simply a result of "generational differences;" yet, no one took the time to help me understand what that meant. As a leader in the company, I have worked hard to ensure that the voices of our youngest and newest teachers are heard and valued, but I still get the sense at times that does not always happen. Also, I am transitioning from being one of the younger staff members into the role of experienced/veteran and my ability to relate is beginning to be tested. Both of these articles helped put things into perspective for me, and I immediately shared them with the rest of my leadership team as resources I thought would benefit our organization.

1 comment:

  1. Susan, I also agree that the Tune In article was one of the more valuable pieces we read this week. It helped me reflect on teaching and made me realize that I do a pretty good job and listening to the younger generation and taking their ideas and feelings into consideration when working with them. I agree with the way that you work with younger workers. I think we constantly have to remind ourselves that we were 23 at one point and try to remember back to how that time was for us. It is even more important now because there seems to be such a huge generational shift between 23 year olds today and say 50 somethings that they work with.

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